Milford Lego team returns from World Championships

Milford Mirror

Published
9:48 am EDT, Tuesday, May 2, 2017

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Milford Lego team returns from World Championships

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Team Lightspeed members Marco Buschauer, Aislinn Burns and Kyle Chy, along with their coaches Michael Buschauer and Amy Burns, just returned from a successful First Lego League World Championship event in St. Louis, Missouri.

More than 15,000 students from around the world traveled to this four-day event, which was attended by more than 30,000 people. Over 33 countries were represented in St. Louis.

The Milford team interacted with teams from many areas, joined in the festivities of the open and closing ceremonies, including representing Connecticut in the opening parade, and discovered innovative approaches to robotics and presentations.

This was the team’s first trip to the World Championship event. The team placed 40th out of 108 teams during the official rounds of the ‘Robot Game’ with a high score of 201 points, out of a total available 439 points.

During the ‘Robot Game,” Lightspeed battled head-to-head with teams from New York, New Jersey, North Dakota, Belgium, Mongolia and Germany.

The judges cited programming, sound construction, and strategy as strengths of Lightspeed’s robot.

During the project presentation, judges commended the team for a clear explanation, and identification of a real world problem in addition to a well-defined and innovative team solution. The Core Values judges commented on the display of the ‘team’s dedication.’ In all areas, the team received valuable feedback from the judges on how to improve.

The team came home with new knowledge they hope to share with other local Lego robotics teams, as well as with anyone who is interested in forming or mentoring a new team.

“The team found that the robots, particularly from Germany and the Republic of Korea, were unbelievable in their design and performance,” said one of the Milford team’s coaches in a letter to the newspaper. “The coaches have already formed international contacts with these teams to continually improve on our own designs and ideas here in Milford.”

Team Lightspeed and their volunteer coaches and mentors plan to return to First Lego League next season even stronger.

If anyone in Milford is interested in joining team Lightspeed (students in grades 4-8 who are passionate about robots and research, with dedicated parents who are willing to help mentor) or anyone interested in starting a team of their own, may contact Amy or Michael at TeamLightspeedFLL@gmail.com.